Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [241]
—from an unsigned review in The Parisian (February 26, 1880)
Gustave Flaubert
In my opinion Nana contains wonderful things: Bordenave, Mignon, etc., and the end, which is epic. It is a colossus with dirty feet, but it is a colossus.
Many things in it shock me, but no matter! One must be able to admire things one doesn’t love.
—from a letter to Mme. Roger des Genettes, translated by Francis Steegmuller (April 18, 1880)
A. K. Fiske
Critics have had their say regarding the latest product of that genius of the muck-rake, Emile Zola. Many of them have endeavored to find a justification for his opening of the sewers of human society into the gardens of literature. Much ability is displayed in this offensive work of engineering skill, and people are asked to pardon the foul sights and odors because of the consummate art with which they are presented. But intellectual power and literary workmanship are neither to be admired nor commended of themselves. They are to be judged by their fruits, and are no more to be justified in producing that which is repulsive or unwholesome than a manufactory whose sole purpose is to create and disseminate bad smells and noxious vapors. Such an unsavory establishment might do its work with a wonderful display of skill and most potent results, but the health authorities of society would have ample occasion for taking measures against its obnoxious business, while those who encouraged the introduction of its products into their households would be guilty of inconceivable folly, besides exhibiting a morbid liking for filthy exhalations.
But it is not alone in M. Zola’s literary talent that excuse is found for his work. It is said to lay bare a phase of human life whose existence is actual, and knowledge of which affords security and perhaps suggests remedies for its evils. The phase of life with which he deals in “Nana” is undoubtedly real, but is, unfortunately, not so far a realm of the unknown that an accurate exploration or a vivid portrayal of its characters and scenes is at all necessary or desirable. Those who are likely to make a salutary use of a knowledge of its secrets have no difficulty in obtaining it, and there is no reason for bringing its revelations into the family circle or the chamber of the schoolgirl. The life of the fallen among women is no deep mystery. It is well enough known in its glare and glitter, in its allurement and revelry, in its Circean fascinations and their besotting effects, in its coarse vulgarity and in its bestial pollutions. The whole Avernian descent from gay hilarity and defiance of doom to putridity and despair is a reality of the world’s everyday experience....
But, though these things are real, M. Zola’s delineations of them are not truthful. His work has been called “realistic,” and that has been paraded as a merit; but what is meant by this word upon which a new meaning is thrust to serve the purposes of criticism? People averse to analyzing take it to mean that the work in question portrays life and character precisely as they exist, without the color or the glamour which fiction is supposed generally to throw over its descriptions. But as applied to Zola’s work it means nothing of the kind. It means that he drags into literature what others would not touch because of its coarseness or its foulness. He displays no extraordinary power in painting scenes of actual life, in portraying human character or in fathoming the feelings or the motives of men.... M. Zola may know more of the life that he undertakes to portray than decent readers care to know, but men who go through the world with their eyes open, and are capable of making those inferences in regard to character and experience which surface indications suggest, know that this book is replete with exaggeration. It does not describe the real life of the class whose type is its central figure, with the sharp lines of truth. The picture is colossal in proportions